Old buildings 'barn again'

Because Andrée Conklin and her blacksmith husband, Dan, live on a lightly traveled road, their barn doesn't enjoy the visibility of those along Interstates. But the building is such a treasure that the New York State Barns and Preservation Program awarded the Conklins a $25,000 grant to restore it. Even then, Mrs. Conklin figures the sum covered only two-thirds of the cost of extensive work.

The couple want to keep the barn's agricultural heritage alive, even if it has almost no commercial potential at this point.

"You can't milk cows in a 200-year-old barn with no electricity, no gutter cleaner, and no concrete floor; it's illegal," she says. "This is a historical remnant."

Experts who've looked over the barn believe it was built between 1800 and 1810. Called a scribe-rule barn, its noninterchangeable framing members are marked with Roman numerals.

The low ceilings suggest it was built for oxen, before people used horses for draft animals.

The barn is close enough to the road to invite curiosity. "If people want to visit, we can't turn them away, because state funds have been put into it," Conklin says. "But we also put our own funds into it, and don't want it to be a tourist attraction."

When Ray Nicol was a boy, his family's dairy farm in Newton, N.H., was surrounded by other family farms. Not anymore. "The abutting farms are mostly house lots now," Mr. Nicol says sadly.

He and his sister, Michele, are determined to preserve as much of the pastoral character of the area as possible, and today they claim the last active farm in town.

Since 1986, they've spent about $60,000 on an aging barn that Nicol believes could be the crown jewel of the the property. Some of the money came from selling a dairy herd, and the rest from a bank loan, reluctantly granted. "The bank wanted us to level the barn and put up a new, efficient building," Nicol recalls.

Banks have a hard time putting sentimental value on paper, his sister adds. But the siblings persevere because they view keeping the farm, which their parents bought in 1945, as a privilege.

The appeal of barns is universal, which means that almost everyone wants them saved. To help accomplish this goal, barn- preservation groups have sprouted across the United States since 1987, the year the National Trust for Historic Preservation began its Barn Again! program. It and the National Barn Alliance, which took root in the Midwest in 1996, provide advice, information, and referrals to numerous barn owners each year.

In some states - such as New York and Vermont - barn- remodeling grants are available through government programs. Iowa offers barn-restoration funds through a foundation. Other states may offer property- or income-tax relief for rehabilitating historic buildings. And Congress is considering a new agricultural bill that incorporates financial incentives for rehabbing barns 50 or more years old.

But budget pressure could affect some of these programs. New York's two-year-old barn-saving program faces an uncertain future due to expected budget cuts.

Marsh Davis of the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana calls barns an American cultural resource that can't be replaced.

They're often restorable, however, especially those with enduring post-and-beam timber frames.

It's the exterior, though, that the public sees and is enamored of, whether the friendly facade of a towering prairie barn, a round Shaker barn, or rambling New England connecting barns.

In an effort to shine the spotlight on barn preservation, the National Trust last year named a 150-year-old Indiana barn as one of America's 11 most endangered places.

Although some barns are being turned into homes and inns, barn-preservation groups hope to save the striking structures for their original uses. "We want them standing in 100 years," says Jacqueline Schmeal of the Iowa Barn Foundation.

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